


Destination

by kriadydragon



Category: White Collar
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-24
Updated: 2011-08-24
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:04:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kriadydragon/pseuds/kriadydragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not getting out that's the problem, it's getting back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Destination

Neal woke to one mother of a headache, complete darkness and a persistent and obnoxious droning. Where ever he was, he was moving, he could tell because it was making him nauseas – the special kind of nauseas that you only ever got with motion sickness. Where ever he was, it was also vibrating.

Neal, swallowing convulsively to hold back the bile creeping up his throat, started feeling around. He was lying on something hard but... felt? There were objects, most of them cold and metal. The space was cramped forcing him to remain curled. And it smelled, like gas and rubber.

Neal thought _car_ , and like kicking a rock to start an avalanche, it all came rushing back to him, making him wince.

Walking to his favorite book store, an old, dented black car following him. Walking home, the same car still trailing him. Taking alleys and back streets to lose the car. Footfalls crunching the asphalt after him. It was night, hard to see. A shadow, a shape, someone looming up out of nowhere, a crack to the head...

And now, obviously, stuffed into the back of a trunk. Neal groaned and not because of the pain pulsing behind his eyes. He knew what this was - this was him being double-crossed, because his partner didn't want to be partners anymore and disposing of him was so much easier than ditching him.

No. No, that wasn't right. It was too soon to be double-crossed. His partner... no, not partner. Employer? Mortimer, yeah. Cedric Mortimer... embezzler. He'd just hired Neal. Neal wasn't a partner he was a... a... an assistant or something, like with Adler, and when would Neal learn not to be someone's confidante, because it never ended well. Case in point, he was in a trunk, about to be gotten rid of in the dumbest, most cliché but still pretty effective method known to that part of the crime world that didn't mind getting its hands dirty, and for all Neal knew he only had seconds to act.

 _Act while you're thinking, Neal. Come on_. Neal continued feeling around. If this was the same car that had been trailing him, then it was an older model, before those handy trunk releases had been installed. He pulled up the carpet and felt for the trunk release cable. Neal smiled in relief when his fingers found it, and he pulled.

Neal had been stuffed into trunks enough times to know that it wasn't the trunk that was your enemy, it was momentum, the car going sixty and you being forced to wait until it dropped to speeds that hopefully didn't break every bone in your body when you rolled out. Neal had to do just that – wait, his skin crawling off his bones with the need to move, get out, get up, and run for dear life. As he waited, one hand keeping the trunk lid from flapping up and down, his other hand searched himself for his cell phone. Not there, of course, but a guy could hope. According to the lack of anything hard and plastic digging into his ankle when he moved his legs, his anklet was gone as well. Good. That meant the Marshall's and Peter would be looking for him.

Neal started to wonder when his life had gone from complete self-reliance to crossing his fingers for the calvary, when the the break lights glowed and the car started to slow. It was now or never if he wanted to make a break for it while the boys up front were busy. Neal flung himself out of the trunk, airborne for only a heart beat before slamming into the asphalt in a battering roll. Things crunched sending waves of pain through his arm, his torso and down his legs, the wind sufficiently knocked from him to keep him from crying out. When he stopped, it was a moment before he could get moving again. The temptation to lie there and ride out the pain nearly overrode his senses but fear managed to stomp it down enough for Neal to pull himself together and push himself to his feet.

Bad idea. His body wasn't happy about it, and let him know with a double helping of agony. It was trumped by the reverberating shriek of tires. Neal forced as much of the pain as he could to the back of his mind and quickly scanned his surroundings.

They'd taken him to the docks – these people were ridiculous and watched way too many gangster movies – warehouses several yards away on the left, the river only feet away to the right, and the voices shouting toward him, their owners hidden on the other side of one of the warehouses.

The docks it was. Arm cradled to his chest, Neal limped quickly as he could toward the water. It was dark, the area unused so the power out, the sky overcast and the air brisk. This was going to suck. Reaching the end of the dock, Neal sat then eased himself over the edge using his good arm, splashing as little as possible. He almost yelped when the cold water seeped through his pant legs and touched his skin. He almost stopped breathing all together when he plunged silently the rest of the way. He wrapped his arms around the dock's slimy leg and held on.

“Where the hell did he go!”

“I don't know. Go check out the water.”

Neal was wrong. _This_ was going to suck. He gulped in a deep breath and pushed himself beneath the surface. Once deep under, he swam forward to the next leg and clung to it. He could hear his heart like it was throbbing directly in his ears, picking up decibels and speed the longer he held his breath. He was a swimmer, not only used to the vigors of treading water but of holding his breath for as long as possible. A minute thirty was his own personal record, carefully cultivated for just such an occasion.

But when holding your breath to hide from the bad guys, with no way of knowing if they'd searched the area where he was submerged, a minute thirty felt like both thirty seconds and a thousand years. His lungs ached, then burned, then screamed begging him for air until he couldn't take it any more. Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself up, head slipping silently from the water. He sucked in an equally slow breath and it was torture, his lungs demanding more air and faster inhales. He pressed his mouth against his sleeve to stifle the coughs. Then he listened, hard to do when the air seemed to rasp against his throat.

All he heard was the water lapping and his quivering breaths. He stayed put all the same, shivering and clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. Just when Neal was starting to wonder if the bad guys had gone, he heard them, still searching, cursing Neal and cursing the boss who had sent them out here in the first place. Frantic footfalls thumped against the docks, so Neal submerged again, waiting until he thought his chest would implode. The next time he surfaced, he couldn't help but gasp and cough, tensing for the shouts of “I know where he is!”

They didn't come; the goons had wandered off again. Neal's jaw lost muscle function and his teeth clacked together.

“Any sign of him?”

“Nope.”

Neal stifled a groan, dropping his forehead against the slimy post. Neal was normally a fan of tenacity but right now he mentally cursed it a blue streak. How the hell did someone like Mortimer get goons this loyal and persistent?

The crunch of gravel was heading his way again. Neal took a breath, about to go under when he heard it, in the distance – the sweet, sweet wail of sirens heading their way. Footfalls became running, heading away from Neal, and Neal chuckled softly, enjoying the irony of loving the sound of police sirens. He heard tires squealing as a car peeled away. Neal forced his stiff, cold body toward an area of shore that would be easiest to climb. The bank was muddy and slick, making him slip, drop and slam his abused body on the ground. By the time he reached the top, he was shaking from both the cold and agony. But he pushed himself up and limped out to the middle of the cracked and pock-marked lot, one hand raised in the air, ready to receive whatever the authorities brought.

The sirens drew closer, louder. Then they faded away. Silence surrounded Neal except for the lapping water.

“Th-that's a f-first,” Neal stammered numbly. He was at a loss, a complete and utter loss. No phone, no anklet, no calvary, just him and his own two feet.

Just like old times. Yeah, sometimes there'd been Mozzie, or Kate, or whoever he'd been working with at the time. But sometimes it was just himself, like now. He was Neal Caffery, who for most of his life had been taking care of himself and getting by just fine. He'd gotten soft, expecting someone to come for him like that. Sometimes no one came, and that was okay, because he'd been there before and survived and he would survive now.

Neal pushed his rigid, aching body into a walk, right leg limping and water squishing in his shoes. A fine suit and pair of shoes ruined; it was just that kind of day.

The ruined clothes became background noise to the growing aches in his body, the limp becoming heavier, the pounding in his skull, arms and somewhere in the vicinity of his back, under the shoulder blade, ratcheting up from uncomfortable to intolerable. He was too far out to come across a cab, so had little choice but to keep going. So he did, pausing just long enough to empty his coiled stomach into the grass on the side of the empty street.

The walking was endless, civilization a million miles away and soon Neal was admonishing his softness, for wishing Peter had come, for wishing the Marshalls had tracked him down, for wanting a damn Calvary and for wanting to lie down and sleep for a while until the pain and the cold stopped. He was shivering so bad it was difficult to breathe.

But, damn it, he had done this before and he would do it again. Walk, run, swim, wait for hours in the most cramped places imaginable, because the destination had always been worth it. The end game. The prize. Always worth it, even if he didn't always know what sat waiting at the end. Love, treasure, a pair of handcuffs, or something else.

Okay, so maybe the destination hadn't always been worth it, but seven times out of ten, it was. He just had to keep going, like he always did.

Neal stumbled around a sharp turn in the street, the way ahead obscured by a building - a building with lights spilling across the street. A small convenient store, by the look of it, and Neal's body nearly dropped from relief.

Either the store clerk was kind or Neal so beat up the guy couldn't in good conscience kick him out. Neal walked in, asked for help and the guy was on the phone, calling for an ambulance while keeping a little distance from the counter and Neal, just in case. Neal slumped to the floor to wait for his ride. All he could figure was that he must have dozed off, because what felt like two seconds later, he was roused by two paramedics and two cops.

The rest was a blur of vitals and questions and being moved onto a gurney. The male paramedic opened Neal's shirt and gave Neal's body a sympathetic wince. Neal craned his neck to look at himself, and arched an eyebrow at the bruises like black and blue ink soaked down his side to his hip.

“S-splains a l-lot,” he rasped.

After the ambulance ride, it was more blurry hell, his body poked and prodded where it hurt and his arm manipulated for X-rays. It hurt worse than when he'd walked, and he thought he might have cussed at the doctors working on him, which he would have to apologize for, later. He wasn't much into swearing, and hated being rude to people just trying to help.

Then it was over, sort of. The pain was at least tolerable when they gave him drugs along with a warm IV to chase away the cold. They wrapped him in blankets and splinted his arm to put a cast on it later depending on what the X-rays had to say. He was cuffed to the bed, one of the cops having figured out who he was, but he was okay with that, because he was warm, and mostly pain-free, and no longer moving. He was about to sleep, when...

“Neal?”

Neal opened his eyes to Peter standing over him trying to look stern but mostly looking relieved, and smiled.

“Hey, Peter,” Neal croaked. He cleared his sore throat. “I'm... kind of having a bad day.”

Peter smiled slightly back. “I can tell. You up to telling me about it?”

Neal did, and Peter remained neutral up until the end, when his jaw clenched and his nostrils flared in controlled fury.

“Didn't see the guys,” Neal said. “But I remember the car and most of the license plate.”

Peter nodded in approval. “Good start. You did good, Neal. You rest, now. I'll get these guys.” He then leaned across the bed and removed Neal's cuff. “I don't think you're going anywhere for a while, anyway.”

Neal chuffed. “Definitely hadn't planned on it.”

\-----------------------

When Neal was finally released, with a cast on his arm, ice pack for the bruising on his ribs and hip and pills to prevent inflammation and pain, it was Peter and El who picked him up, Peter with good news.

“We traced the car, just like you described, and caught the guys. They folded like one of your origami swans. Mortimer's in custody, so no more worrying about any more of his thugs trying to stuff you into a trunk.”

Neal, mostly out of it from the medication, snorted. “Haven't met a trunk that can hold me, yet.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

Instead of June's, Peter brought him to their house, where Mozzie was waiting, along with Jones dropping by to give Peter an update on what else they'd found out about Mortimer's embezzling, and Diana, most likely there to make sure Mozzie didn't try to steal anything. Peter interjected himself between the door and a happy Satchmo clumsy in his desire to greet everyone, while Elizabeth helped Neal to the couch. There were greetings and well wishes, the scent of coffee and some type of confection baking in the oven. The house was warm, Neal was warm, and he could have melted into the couch until the end of his days.

He'd reached his destination.

The End


End file.
